Indulging my love of poetry by posting a poem a day, every day... to inspire, delight and enlighten!

Wednesday, 4 July 2012

Day 13: Independence Day

Since it's Independence Day today in America, I'd like to post a poem by Walt Whitman, the veritable Uncle Sam of American literature.

Whitman's 'Song of Myself' was revolutionary in its day and has since become epic. It celebrated the sense of one's self in the world and unity with others, creating in turn the cornerstone theme of American literature - a focus on the self and the individual's power to obtain life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

There is a great sense of democracy in this poem as Whitman sings the whole of America, including all previously excluded from the literary Canon. It has an energy and vitality to it that is unique to this day.

This poem is very long, so I have only included an excerpt. You can read the whole version here.

Song of Myself - Walt Whitman

1

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you
shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a
spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from
this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same,
and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect
health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in
abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never
forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

***17

These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and
lands, they
are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as
mine they are nothing, or next to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and
the untying of the riddle they are nothing,
If they are not just as close as
they are distant they are nothing.

This is the grass that grows wherever
the land is and the water is,
This the common air that bathes the globe.

***

24

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,
Turbulent,
fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding,
No sentimentalist, no
stander above men and women or apart from them,
No more modest than
immodest.
Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors
themselves from their jambs!
Whoever degrades another degrades me,
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.

Through me the
afflatus surging and surging, through me the current
and index.

I
speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy,
By God! I will
accept nothing which all cannot have their
counterpart of on the same terms. ...............................

***52

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my
gab
and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am
untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after
the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor
and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway
sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I
bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me
again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am
or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And
filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep
encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere
waiting for you.

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The poem is not a thing we see - it is, rather, a light by which we may see - and what we see is life. ~Robert Penn Warren

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words. ~Paul Engle

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away. ~ Carl Sandburg

The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes. ~W. Somerset Maugham

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does. ~Allen Ginsberg

Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them. ~Dennis Gabor

"Always learn poems by heart," she said. "They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like the fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.'"~ Janet Fitch, 'White Oleander'

A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman. ~Wallace Stevens

Poetry is the development of an exclamation. ~Paul Valery

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. ~Robert Frost

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. ~Percy Byshe Shelley

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. ~ Leonard Cohen

Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement. ~Christopher Fry

Poetry should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance. ~John Keats

Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard. - Anne Sexton

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way? ~ Emily Dickinson

The poet is the man made to solve the riddle of the universe who brings the whole soul of man into activity. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge